I wrote this article for an arts publication – unfortunately, at the last moment they weren’t about to publish it for reasons, but the upshot of this is that I can publish it here! While it’s not specifically about video games, AI and Gen-AI in particular is going to have an ever-bigger impact on the games industry, so it’s still…
If you’re on a certain social media platform owned by a ketamine-addicted fascist (and you know all know which one I’m talking about – ask yourself why we all know that), then you’ve probably seen a new phenomenon sweeping across the techbro accounts. One of that mob released a new…
I was tempted to resist writing anything about the announcement of Ghost…
“What games have you regretted buying the most?” It’s one of those…
We’re at that point in the development of our medium where there’s a game for every imaginable task and occupation; or at least, that’s what you’d think on a cursory google of any job followed by the word “simulator”. And yet, it’s rare to find many games which seek to…
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A Time Magazine article from 1958 describes a group of Japanese labourers who, while digging a road into a hillside during the postwar building boom, uncovered a cache of strange terracotta figures: clay representations of people, horses, birds, and houses. Having no idea what to do with them, the workers…
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Ocarina of Time’s Link isn’t what you’d picture when you think of a video game protagonist – at least not at first. Not the first time you play it. There’s nothing special about Link. He’s a kid in the Kokiri Forest, the only one without a fairy. When he finally…
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Over in the world of literature, there has been quite the kerfuffle over the last week or so. News broke that the estate of Roald Dahl, and the publisher of his books, Puffin, would be taking the author’s body of work and, on the advice of sensitivity readers, making several…
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The High&Low film series (available via Netflix in the west) is many things. First and foremost, the film series offers some of the most wildly entertaining action to come out of Japan’s cinema industry in recent years. The action in these films is big. So big that you’d be forgiven…
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If you’ve got access to Netflix, then you’ve probably seen the Rilakkuma animated series. Rilakkuma and Kaoru launched back in 2019, and a second season: Rilakkuma’s Theme Park Adventure, finally landed, after some delays, in late 2022. As stop-motion animations, each of the short, generally sweet episodes across both seasons…
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I once found it quite hard to get into racing. I have friends who are big fans, and who can talk endlessly about the microscopic detail that goes into every car, but as an outsider, I admit it’s easy to miss the complexity for the simple – cars go fast.…
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